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OrganizationAssuming nobody has a problem, I'm going to try and lead us through this. I may need a break at some point, so if somebody else could be ready to fill in, pending emergencies or AFKness, that would be handy.

Intro Group - 2 - 3 "Greeters", who will invite people to the outfit, answer early questions, and get them shuffled off ASAP to combat squads. Also new arrivals. In the Platoon 1 mumble channel.

Combat squads - an estimated 8 squads. There needs to be a radio officer for each. This can or can not also be the squad lead, depending on preference and availability of people. Also in here is a mix of new and returning players. In the various Squad Play channels.

Roles and Responsibilities

Squad leads - Be nice. Be proactive. Realise that things will be slower, and you'll die to small enemy forces. Make sure you have comms binds set up in case you lack an RO. I'll see if I or someone else who knows what they are doing can get this sorted out at the start of the night, but if not, here is a guide on how to make recruitment work:

Radio Officers - Anyone who even might be this, please set up one extra mumble bind. You want to create a shout, on any suitable button, to the "Supreme Giraffe and Chums" channel.
This will be used to give sitreps, ask questions/make requests of the leadership, and any other needs you may have. Anyone who thinks that they might do any leader role should do this.

Greeters - Be friendly, knowledgable. Invite people to the outfit. Be at least Giraffe Beacon rank so you can do invites (we can arrange promotions for those who need it).

Scouts - A couple of people, happy to fly around scythes and report back to me what they see, and to do any other small tasks that show up in the night.

Liason - Work with other outfits as and where necessary. Cooper has already pencilled himself in for this.

Grunts - Help out the new guys. Be friendly, but not too noisy. Go along with your SL, don't whitter too much about game balance. Have fun. Shoot lasers.

Supreme Giraffe - Give all squads direction. Contact each squad radio officer directly. Keep the platoon as a whole moving. Keep the herd as a whole informed as to what they are doing and why.

Original Post

So, there's been some muttering about this happening again, possibly on Thursday/ (Muttering as in Jim tweeting to the world about it).

So we want to plan for it. I think having a thread for it separately is a good idea.

Some things to note:

Last time we peaked at ~120 players. It will only get this big again if there's a front page post, and then only maybe. Need to be ready for this sort of scale however.

Having squads within a platoon open recruitment appears to work just fine now, as long as the squad leads know what they are doing. We should be using this!

New players fight much, much weaker than our regular groups. Strategic decisions need to allow for this. (Basically, use at least one more squad than you think you need)

Having a 10-member big strategic leader comms channel probably won't work, need to decide on a command-comms structure that will.

Getting some good AAR work done would be great for general outfit bigging-up.

Why won't a 10 member channel work, or what do you mean? Surely we play stratgir and keep it per squad so new players can ask questions and are able to speak. This is of course after they've visited the Cooper Bootplatoon.

I think we should have a supreme Giraffe. If I can be there, I'd quite like to do it (I'll be able to feed back on that by the end of the day, probably) . However, I'd need to run somewhat different comms to what we normally do. Ideally I'd like to be able to talk to squad leads in pairs, and have them talking to each other. I'm not sure if that can be done easily with mumble however. Maybe using tokens? Failing that, it's fairly easy to have all squad leads shout to the SG individually, and all SLs just shout a the SG. Makes coordinating intel a pain however.

Amerish is probably the best bet. It's normally the quietest continent, and while there's a lot to like about Esamir, I worry that the relentless monochromacity will get people down - the lack of magriders if we don't have Eisa could frustrate too.

Why won't a 10 member channel work, or what do you mean? Surely we play stratgir and keep it per squad so new players can ask questions and are able to speak. This is of course after they've visited the Cooper Bootplatoon.

As in 10 squad leads + overall lead in a shared channel. Too much noise.
Squad size comms channels in general is definitely the way forward.

I think the call in system needs to be set up for this. ROs will then also call in to other ROs in the same platoon, as well as the SG. SG coordinates the platoons, PLs coordinates squads, and ROs talk to other ROs if need be.

Edit: meant that ROs call in to PL, but perhaps we skip the PL and just call in to SG and do it Broclave style? Like Coopera platoon is one or two squads (giraffe 1/2) and so on. PL2 and PL3 are then giraffe 3,4,5,6 etc. SG CMaster coordinates all, we skip playing in platoons basically and just squad it.

I think the call in system needs to be set up for this. ROs will then also call in to other ROs in the same platoon, as well as the SG. SG coordinates the platoons, PLs coordinates squads, and ROs talk to other ROs if need be.

Edit: meant that ROs call in to PL, but perhaps we skip the PL and just call in to SG and do it Broclave style? Like Coopera platoon is one or two squads (giraffe 1/2) and so on. PL2 and PL3 are then giraffe 3,4,5,6 etc.

I'm not sure that Platoon Lead is really that useful a role in this sort of setup. SG directs the squads, gets sitreps. SLs lead the squads. If comms is largley direct, can consider if ROs are really necessary (more practically, I worry that we'd struggle to get 10SLs + 10ROs.) How would the inter-squad comms work though, technically. Do we need everyone who wants to be involved in the command structure to set up 0-9 numpad shouts? Is there some better way we can do this?

Also, I think the SG should have a couple of dogsbodies - preferably people who can fly a scythe and do scouting missions, but also fill in any other emergency tasks that come up on the night.

@Bankrotas: Jim said before PS2 even went into beta, that the only RPS outfit he would be involved with was a Vanu one.

As I said, one platoon is just that - no squads. So it's basically 1 PL (Cooper) that also communicates when moving over people, and then we have 8 SLs and 8 ROs. I am sure we can get SLs that have no need for radio officer. But yeah, in call in RO might be largely unnecessary.

Regarding PL, it is not needed indeed, except for Coopers platoon.

ROs might be useful for inter squad comms. No other way then to use such things or perhaps SLs just use shout to all in mumble.

Also, if this happens i'd really like to see us do something really ... "big". Oh, and it'd probably best to have a higher than usual number of medics in the squads so that we can make sure people always get revived. Definitely a better experience for newer people.

One thing I've been toying with for a time is having the PL be just a paper-pusher, moving people around whenever needed. This is a task that always needs to be done by someone (possibly less often if per-squad recruitment works), but just distracts from actually leading. This could be a good time for that.

I think we really should try to get SL+RO in every squad wherever it is possible. It makes such a difference to the experience! The SLs won't be able to take care of their squad members properly if they are listening in on 8-10 others talking to the SG, even if the comms channel is ever so tidy and disciplined. That's what I think, at least. We've got loads of vets, we should be able to manage this, surely?

I don't think this one will be as big as the firt one either, to be honest. Not enough advance warning. This is not to be disparaging or anything, I still applaud the initiative!

The idea being discussed so far is to make all comms direct between SG and the RO/SL. So there's no worry about excess noise, meanng there's a lot less noise for the SL to deal with. Honestly, my experiences with the joint RO/SL system so far have all been bad, so I'm really not sold on it yet, although I'd be happy to go with it for this session, if we could find the ~16 people we're going to need.

It seems like there have been several people now that point out the negative with the system but fail to see the _massive_ gain and difference it does for squad leading. After being grunt under a SL not using a RO lately, there was a rather large difference in comparison to how I myself was able to lead my squad and when said SL had to wait for orders and such. It does make a huge difference in decisive leadership and such.

The negative is a slight delay (under 10 seconds) between SG/PL and SL. That is nothing. When relaying stuff it goes the same way. This adds up of course, but I have never had a situation where something was outdated because it didn't reach the SG/PL in time. PS2 is not really that hectic that 10 seconds is a matter of life and death. Good leadership however is.

Because when I've been platoon lead and asked for sitreps, I get either silence or "don't know" from the radio officers the majority of the time. (OR once told to shut up by an RO, because they wanted to listen to their squad).

Because when I've been a grunt, I've been confused for 10-15 minutes as to who was leading the squad. I was told to shut up by the RO as much, if not more than I was by SLs. Because all the SL did in pretty much every case was repeat whatever the RO had said. (e.g. RO would say "We have to go to Auraxicom" SL would say "Get in the bus to go to Auraxicom".

Because when I've been an SL, I really want to know the context. Because I want to let the PL know what I need to achieve the objective, not have to explain it to someone else, then wait for them to explain it wrong to the PL, then wait for the result to come through too late.

It's not been a disaster at any point. But I've not yet seen the benefits of it at all.

The idea being discussed so far is to make all comms direct between SG and the RO/SL. So there's no worry about excess noise, meanng there's a lot less noise for the SL to deal with.

It didn't sound that way to me, from Ridebird's post. Did I read that wrong?

Sad to hear your experience of the radio/lead split has been predominantly bad. To be fair I've only done it twice, both times as radio operator, but it worked very well for me then, I think. Not sure how other members of the squad found it, of course. Granted, it takes a certain mindset to make a good radio giraffe; you need to know when to report in, when to request new orders, and such. I didn't do that very good at all times, sometimes getting lost in the game when I should've been asking for new orders, for instance.

We can leave it up to every squad leader how they want to handle it of course, since it may not be to everyone's taste. Rather have enough squad leads than put people off by requiring they conform to a procedure they're uncomfortavle with, I suppose.

SL is SL in the game. RO should declare him/herself as well. We have had a lot of pretty fresh people on the RO mission, so that could be it. I also have felt that sitreps and such have been lacking and that ROs have not responded in much detail, but I felt that if the SLs can lead better, it is well worth it.

Perhaps we need to go to the call in system full time then, and skip the radio officers. I really, really, really dislike the command channel as it makes any form of squad leading beyond "lets go here" nigh impossible with the headsplittering chatter that goes on in there. That can also be MUUUUUCH improved, but it seems like most want to keep it chatty or something. I really think PLs and SGs should say as much as "go here, bring x" and that is _it_. Nothing more, no discussion, nothing. We have way too much chatter in command about how/when/with whom.

If we used call in we could have more elaborate discussions SL to SL or SG to SL.

Still though, I much prefer not caring for comms when squad leading. That way I can just focus on leading my squad and succeeding in just that. If I have to wait for orders and can't direct my squad for 20 seconds why they also need to shut it, that is absolutely terrible. With ROs as well you can have priority speakers and channels without missing squad chatter, since squad chatter does not matter for the RO.

All in all though we need to be much, much more decisive, short and militaristic with orders and command comms. SG should explain the general plan to the whole platoon/all who are playing, SLs should not be given that info other then what their objective is and very important intel as well as if vehicles are needed.

Actually in such a set up PLs are essential. So the SG commander issues a general order to Platoon 1 (move to Ikanam from the north, securing adjacent territories) and Platoon 2 (move to Ikanam from the south, the same), and the PLs allocate assets. For instance one squad to North Grove, the other three to NC Arsenal because there is resistance there. The situation changes, and North Grove is counter-attacked, so the PL switches some of his squads there. The SG is getting sit-reps, and if the situation becomes too hot, orders Platoon 2 to reinforce Platoon 1.

How are we going to set things up so that people can easily step in on the night to do what needs to be done?

I guess have a SG channel, tell anyone who is doing radio work to just set up a shout to the SG channel. Any SGs canidates can reasonably be expected to put the time in to set up the appropriate key-binds for mumble I think, and to do so in advance.

Have the platoons initially populated with SLs who know how to set up outfit-only recruitment properly. (Can we please give this a proper test this week?)

Do we want to put out a request for volunteer war reporters - or just encourage people to make notes as the night goes on for better AARs?)

Might it even be a good idea to have the SG shout at a whole squad, rather than just one member of it? Provided they can keep things brief of course.